Summary Of Nfl's Ratings Decline By Michael Hurley

In the article titled, “Arrogance, Deceit, Oversaturation At Root of NFL’s Ratings Decline”, CBS Boston writer Michael Hurley provides a long list of reasons as to why he believes the usually strong viewership and high ratings of the NFL on TV have gone down dramatically this year. Hurley touches upon a myriad of varying potential causes for the decline of the NFL’s ratings in order to provide his audience, likely sports fans, with an idea as to what exactly is going on to create such a problem. Although Hurley notifies the audience of various factors that may be causing the ratings to go down, his argument lacks depth and credibility due to an evident lack of ethos. Furthermore, Hurley seems to undermine the problem’s complex nature by hastily

His lack of attention to the details behind these generalized statements make it seem as though he is undermining the problem of the NFL ratings going down which in turn undermines his argument. One of the factors he lists as a potential reason for the decline in the NFL’s ratings is the denial of the league and their refusal to address issues like this. Hurley says, “They think you’re dumb. You’re finally starting to prove them wrong” (Arrogance). Here, Hurley is stating that the NFL thinks that all of its fans are dumb because they don’t pick up on the issues that the league is dealing, or refusing to deal, with. Assuming what the NFL thinks of its fanbase is clearly a hasty generalization. By failing to provide any more detail or elaborate upon the nature of the relationship between the NFL and its fans and how that relates to the ratings, Hurley is in effect belittling the issue at hand which really takes away from his

The lack of ethos makes Hurley, and his words, seem unreliable throughout. Additionally, the use of generalization as opposed to details makes it seem as though Hurley is undermining the issue of the NFL’s ratings which takes away from the premise of his argument. Lastly, the presence of so many non sequitur arguments causes Hurley’s article to lose its clarity and direction which in turn diminishes his argument as a whole. While all of these factors make the article unconvincing, they are relatively easy fixes. To solve the problem with ethos, Hurley simply has to provide more sources for the information that he gives. For example, by simply searching “NFL TV ratings by year”, Hurley could have found www.sportsmediawatch.com, a website which includes well organized, year by year data on the NFL’s tv ratings. To avoid hasty generalizations, Hurley has to simply reword phrases such as, “They think you’re dumb” and provide more detail to back these phrases up. A better alternative would be, “The NFL has continuosly dismissed acknowledging it’s problems due to a lack of outcry from its fan base”. Lastly, to avoid non sequitur arguments, Hurley must elaborate further upon his arguments. When discussing the London games, by simply mentioning that the games are televised at 9:30 AM and therefore don’t attract many viewers, Hurley could have made a logical point about the London games’ effect on the